This piece is apropos to the need for innovation in the way we think about technical writing as technologies evolve to fit societal and business needs and desires. It’s not a technical product innovation. It’s a way of seeing one’s work and deliverables in the bigger picture.

Barbara Giammona writes:

“A significant skill that I did not list is one adeptly identified by Jack Molisani, a former STC chapter president, whose business includes outsourcing and placement of technical communicators. He labeled this skill “the evaluation of importance,” the ability to recognize what is important in a situation or in a set of information.

“I have been searching for a name for this trait for years, for it is a core skill that I have seen lacking in many senior-level professionals. It’s the proverbial ability to “see the forest for the trees” and to still know which individual trees matter. It’s the ability to ask the right questions of a subject matter expert so as to “cut to the chase” and not waste a busy person’s time. It’s the ability to know what to include and exclude from an explanation to make it accurate and complete, without being overly detailed. And it is absolutely crucial to success in our field.”

This ability is related to another need that I see: the need for systems thinking in tech communication, and in fact, in business and society in general.

Systems thinking is a skill and a way of viewing problems and challenges that I believe should be taught not only in technical writing curriculums, but all curriculums. It allows one to see
- the forest
- the trees
- where one’s own tree fits in the forest and
- a launch pad for changing and improving the forest

Why is systems thinking so crucial?

Maybe I’ll explore that question in a blog of my own. To be continued…?

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For one, let the tech writer research the best tools for the job, and learn about how the communication function works (or doesn’t) throughout the entire company. For very large companies, this may be almost impossible. That’s the communication department’s job.

But it could prove extremely valuable for smaller organizations.

As an example, I found out about CMS (content management systems), DITA, single sourcing and dynamic publishing while researching HATs (help authoring tools). These tools are rapidly evolving to help companies coordinate the similar functions that communicators do, and the verbiage that gets tossed inefficiently from department to department, with myriad edits and content changes along the way.

How could this work?
Let’s say R&D develops a new product. They list the features that have been improved over the previious version on a document, which is given to sales staff to use for information valuable to the selling process. This list also goes to marketing, which adapts it to generate ad and other copy and collateral. It also goes to a training department, which adapts it for training various staff on the new product; and to IT for entering in the enterprise software so that sales and shipments and manufacturing processes and various statistics can be tracked. Each department has a different, and sometimes overlapping, use for the same information.

All of these flows and changes can apparently be best managed by a CMS or dynamic publishing or DITA. But most likely, nobody in the company hierarchy except the tech communicators know this.

One of the challenges is conducting a company need analysis and recommending this kind of software and system to the company officers.

Tech communicators are among those best poised to understand it; so we need to learn to view our compannies and our jobs with a systems approach, not thinking “I’ll just do my little job and let someone else handle the big picture.”

Then we need to learn how to present the ideas and new systems to management in a way that educates as well as fits in terms of the company’s vision, business plan and communications strategy.

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As for those who *just like to do their jobs*, it won’t work. I suspect a fair number of people fall into that category, including tech writers. But many of those, I would guess, become accountants and other number-crunching types.

I don’t know, though, since I’m in the creative communicator category, and don’t know what it’s like not to be. I can’t seem to stop generating ideas. It’s which ones to focus on and how to market them that I find difficult.

I believe most companies could do better by at least asking employees their opinions on how they, their department and the company could do better. People often know exactly what bogs them down.

Sometimes the company needs a consultant to tell it what the employees have been saying for years!

Many companies I’ve been involved with don’t trust the employees enough, in terms of intelligence or insight, or authority, to let them make or even recommend changes that could rev the organization into a higher gear.

And I’d guess that most employees would be more excited about their jobs if they had more involvement and engagement, and were asked their opinions by management. And in my experience, that’s a rare treat offered by management.

The Japanese incorporate this kind of request for innovation and improvement in daily worklife. They call it “kaizen,” which means “improvement.” Many small improvements lead to much larger steps over time and en masse.

Some Japanese companies, like Toyota and Honda, seem able to master the art of getting the best and most ideas from employees. At least, that’s how it looks from the outside. (One never knows unless you do the job for a while.)

And look where they are now: They make the best quality cars, and are generally way ahead of US automakers in areas like fuel economy and styling.

If US companies want to follow IBM’s and Google’s examples, they need to support some creativity and independent judgment in their employees. Many people have vision, creativity, observational and analytical skills, and I believe these are vastly underused by most managers in the US.

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Great post. Another good read on innovation is “Weird Ideas that Work” by Robert Sutton. As a manager, I struggle with implementing innovations that we have. It is a battle between getting the appropriate sponsor-level support to be able to institute the change and getting the complacent writers to try something new. If you don’t have buy in from both sides, it seems like it’s more frustrating than it’s worth. I know that it’s not (big picture), but when you are in the middle of it, it can be frustrating to everyone.